I tried playing this on a laptop with windows 11. Thief 1 and 2 both worked without an issue, but thief 3 fails to work (can't get past tutorial, its buggy). While there maybe unofficial patches that help with this, for me this is unacceptable and not worth my time.
While graphically this game gave some issues, gamplay wise it has aged very well in 2024. Great background soundtracks. Gameplay is not that difficult but fun due to the diverse way to handle the game, level design is great. Just go for it.
Its a good 3d platformer, very creative level design. Its a prety easy game that anyone would be able to enjoy. Humor is pretty good, should make you laugh and keep things light.
Insanely illogical puzzles. Just watch on youtube for superior experience. This is the only game where I used walkthrough for almost everything, as it is simply not worth wasting your brain energy on solving them. Characters are bad, music is bad, puzzles bad. The only not bad thing is the atmosphere and store, which are above average at best.
If you watch this on youtube this would be a superior experience to playing it, which annoys me hence 2 stars. Issues are: - Slow walking animation - Entering/exiting area wastes more time in unskippable animations - Some diagrams can't be carried with you, so you would need more retractions across the level to solve puzzles (which test your patience with slow walking/entering/exiting) Its a good experience with a walkthrough.
Most of the game is fantastic, but the checkpoints really hurt the experience on higher difficulty. Back in old days developers put in fake difficulty like this since they didn't want to expose the game's short length - this game lasted me 15 hours, but the content in it is probably closer to 9 hours (maybe even less). If they made a sequel to this, I guarantee you they wouldn't use the same checkpoint system. Not only does the game NOT save the game on a checkpoint (you have to manually save every checkpoint to actually persist the changes), the checkpoints are also placed very aggravatingly. It is very common to defeat a boss and find more enemies before you hit a checkpoint, which might result in you retrying the boss multiple times - this really ruins immersion as defeating the boss doesn't feel as fun as it would be. I recommend this game if you feel you would be ok with rubbish grade save system. Do not hesistate in using wikis/guides/glitches to defeat bosses, especially on the highest difficulty. (You will need to tweak a couple of ini files to get the game to display full hd and enable sound, which I didn't mind).
Venetica is a third person action RPG. Gameplay is similar to fable series. Pros - - Flow of the game is pretty impressive. You unlock fast travel in a very organic way in this game, and even games like dark souls struggled with managing that. - Quality of life features are decent. - Game length is just right. - Some of the maps in the game remind me of games like dragon age and witcher. - Decent soundtracks. - In general I found it fun to be exploring the world of venetica, which is not always the case for me in other games. Cons - - Have to go in with low expectations, otherwise you will find many things to be of low quality. - Combat is simplistic, similar to fable. No ranged weapons like bows, guns, etc. The only variety in combat is achieved by different melee weapons, and magic skills. - Quests can be pretty repetitive (defeat "Gripper" in location A/B/C). I joined a guild where I got 4 guild missions, all of them involving killing the same enemy. The only variety in those missions were finding the enemies, which was decently fun. If there were more interesting side quests and a better combat system, then this would have been a decent recommendation.
Didn't expect this game to be this good. Pros: 1. Platforming tools are pretty fun to play around with. 2. Game does not overstay its welcome (short around 10 hours long). 3. Good music in most parts. 4. Combat is semi-decent. Cons: 1. An easy game overall, so it might be not so challenging for those who seek difficulty. 2. Never gets to a moment where you are truly awed by anything in the game, in other words it is mostly mediocre in most parts. I like platformers, so I was willing to see beyond the cons for this one.
Game is less of stealth and more of a puzzle where you figure out the best way to get your targets assassinated without arousing much suspicion. Higher difficulty just means that enemies will take more of your time and patience, and less number of save files. Much better than the earlier entries in the game.
I really liked the gunplay in this game, but the game itself falls short of being a great experience. Too many things not to my taste. They are: 1. Respawning enemies in checkpoints - easily the biggest headache in the game that gets in the way of enjoyment, particularly the driving cars/boats. You cannot relax, have to be constantly alert. 2. Malaria medicine - You need to follow through with repetitive missions to get malaria medicine, I found it very boring. Every 2-3 main mission, you have to go on an errand to get the medicine. 3. Side missions - Due to point 1, no motivation to go on an side mission. Too repetitive and fun dies out. Effectively, I skipped quite a few missions since it involves doing too many things already done. 4. Dead open world - The open world is completely dead. Only enemies, no friendly npcs (except rare underground missions). No variety in the open world, the second half of the game is in a different location compared to first, but it feels like the same in most areas. These are pretty big issues, they really spoilt something that was otherwise a gem.
